HKS Students and Research Affiliates

In this article, Ms. Goldenziel explores the administrative and constitutional peculiarities of the Bush Administration's Faith-Based Initiative. She argues that the Supreme Court's establishment clause jurisprudence offers no clear standards for administrative rule-making. However, the Bush administration has ignored the Supreme Court's guidelines and has crafted a program of dubious constitutionality. The Initiative is nearly impermeable to constitutional challenges or other public checks because of its peculiar place in the administrative structure. Because the Initiative endangers the fundamental constitutional right to freedom from religious establishment, Ms. Goldenziel calls for the Initiative to be publicly accountable, and provides suggestions for how the Bush administration can achieve this goal.

In this article, Ms. Goldenziel explores the growing controversy over no-funding provisions, state constitutional provisions that restrict state funding of religious institutions. These provisions, allegedly rooted in anti-Catholic bigotry, may threaten state implementation of school choice programs and faith-based initiatives involving public funding of religious social service organizations. Ms. Goldenziel argues that these no-funding provisions, which are commonly termed Blaine Amendments, Little Blaines, or Baby Blaines, are often unrelated to the failed federal Blaine Amendment, and do not always share the federal amendment's infamous anti-Catholic history. In the first study of its type, Ms. Goldenziel surveys the language and history of constitutional provisions prohibiting funding of religious institutions in all fifty states, and details the constitutional history and judicial interpretation of these provisions in eight representative states: Ohio, Wisconsin, Arizona, Florida, Colorado, Michigan, Vermont, and Maine. Ms. Goldenziel concludes that the fates of school vouchers and faith-based initiatives will not rest on the so-called Blaine Amendments, but on the ideological and jurisprudential tendencies of state judiciaries. Debate over school choice and charitable choice should therefore move from courtrooms to the political arena.

Radical separatists based in the North Caucasus have the motive and are seeking the means to commit an act of nuclear terrorism as well as allies to help them carry it out. Their proximity to insufficiently secured Russian nuclear facilities and their contents makes the prospect of nuclear terror in Russia very real. This article assesses the magnitude of this threat, considers possible attack scenarios, and suggests ways to reduce the likelihood of a catastrophic attack on Russian soil.

Russia's military-political leadership envisions a formidable range of uses for the country's arsenal of non-strategic nuclear weapons (NSNWs). In the eyes of Russian leaders, these weapons play a critical role in the nation's defense and security posture as part of the country's overall nuclear arsenal and as an equalizer for the weakness of the nation's conventional forces vis-a-vis NATO and China. Russia's military-political leadership and policy influentials also assign a number of specific roles to NSNWs, including deterrence of powers in the south. Given these perceived and real benefits of possessing NSNWs, it is rather difficult to imagine that Russia will agree to eliminate all of its non-strategic nuclear weapons in the foreseeable future even if its actions are fully reciprocated by the U.S. and other nuclear weapons states. However, securing Russia's consent to negotiate an arms control treaty that would reduce the numbers of non-strategic nuclear weapons and put them under accounting and verification regimes is not a mission impossible. First, only some of the roles envisioned for these weapons are realistic, and these roles require far fewer NSNWs than what Russia has today. Second, the Russian leadership's perceptions of NSNWs' roles can change too. In fact, Russia has already either indicated or explicitly stated conditions that if met, would facilitate Moscow's consent to verifiable reductions of Russian and U.S. NSNWs, which are now subject only to unilateral U.S. and Russian presidential initiatives, which are unverifiable and non-binding. There are also a number of other factors that can help lower the value of NSNWs in the eyes of the Russian military-political leadership. Third, while there are perceived benefits of possessing tactical nuclear weapons, there are also formidable risks and costs incurred by Russia's current NSNW posture. I would argue that a Russian-U.S. arms control treaty with verification and accounting mechanisms would be a good first step to both reducing these risks and costs and to bringing the numbers of NSNWs down to levels sufficient for the roles that these weapons can realistically play.

This paper explores the context, practice and lessons related to management and leadership development in a handful of large international NGOs (INGOs) focused on humanitarian and development efforts. The paper is based on eighteen semi-structured interviews with senior managers of human resources or organizational development at INGOs including ActionAid, CARE, Catholic Relief Services, Habitat for Humanity, Médecins Sans Frontières, Mercy Corps, Oxfam, Save the Children and World Vision. It describes how INGOs (individually and collectively) are addressing the challenge of developing strong managers and leaders, what some promising approaches in management and leadership development currently are, what lessons can be learned from past and ongoing experiences in management and leadership development, what challenges and priorities remain, and whether and how academic institutions might be a resource.

This paper will explore which lessons of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis Armenian and Azeri leaders should consider institutionalizing if they wish to prevent reheating of their conflict over Nagorny Karabakh into a war. Using the October 1962 crisis as an example, the paper will demonstrate how dangerously mistaken national leaders could be when they place their bets on their ability to control conflict escalation. What a leader may perceive as an incremental step – that he is taking to up the pressure on the opponent – can set off a chain of actions on international, national, organizational, and even personal levels, the confluence of which could lead to an armageddon. Specifically, the paper will describe cases when contingency routines developed by organizations at the time of the 1962 crisis could have pushed conflicting sides into a war against wishes or even explicit orders of national leaders, and how that possibility may arise in the Karabakh conflict. The authors will also argue that escalation of the Cuban missile crisis could have acquired its own logic, pre-determining a sequence of events that may have ultimately resulted into an all-out war and how the same can happen with the Karabakh conflict. The paper will also highlight how damaging absence of direct communication between supreme leadership of conflicting sides could be in times of crisis. This paper will seek to prove how difficult it may be to achieve de-escalation of a conflict in absence of either overwhelming superiority by one side or fear of mutually assured destruction on both sides. The authors will also make a case for how vital it is to avoid cornering your opponent or yourself, and how important it is for the opponents to factor in interests of other key stakeholders. Using Soviet actions in 1962 as an example, the paper will argue that poor execution can ruin most brilliant plans and cost the author of these daring designs his career. The paper will conclude with a number of recommendations for Armenian and Azeri leaders interested in preventing a new war over Nagorny Karabakh.

There is hardly a statesman left in the world who has not heard about Singapore’s economic miracle, which began almost 50 years ago and continues to date. If there is a single person without whom Singapore’s phenomenal transformation would not have been possible, that person is Lee Kuan Yew.
Lee’s record of transforming Singapore has become the subject of dozens of books, but there is one recent book that stands out, written by U.S. statesmen Graham Allison and Robert D. Blackwill, with the help of Harvard University researcher Ali Wyne. Published in March 2013, Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master's Insights on China, the United States, and the World mostly focuses on China’s rise. However, the book also represents a comprehensive collection of practical advice from the founding father of Singapore on how to build and run an effective public administration system that every statesman of any country would find useful.

Protestant missions from the United States entered the Republic of Korea and Guatemala at the same time (1884 and 1882, respectively). Yet, their impact on human capital has been divergent. The analysis presented in this paper supports the findings of Woodberry (2004, 2009, 2011) and Nunn (2009) in the case of the Republic of Korea. Mainline Protestant missions — Presbyterian and Methodist — promoted the Social Gospel and were the largest in the Republic of Korea implementing successful strategies such as using Korean (Hangul) as the lingua franca in their schools, churches, and medical facilities. Whereas the mainline Protestant denominations in the Republic of Korea successfully promoted investment in human capital, the case of Guatemala does not follow this pattern. Evangelical, Pentecostal, and neo-Pentecostal denominations and churches focused their efforts on evangelizing. Their premilliennialist beliefs translated into an eschatological urgency of conversion with little investment in human capital. As a result, institution-building requisite for investment in human capital (establishing educational institutions and medical facilities) characterized Protestant missions in the Republic of Korea, but not Guatemala. These diverging approaches to exporting Christianity have had differing longterm effects on the two societies.

The current European migration crisis has been playing out worldwide. As record numbers of migrants have fled their countries in recent years, wealthier states have had an increasing interest in restricting their borders to protect national security. The challenge of balancing domestic security interests with international human rights commitments has fallen to courts. Drawing on cases involving interdiction of migrants and refugees at sea from the U.S., Australia, and the European Court of Human Rights, this chapter will compare how the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees has been interpreted across countries and over time. It will show how courts have permitted countries to circumvent the core prohibition of the Refugee Convention, and discuss when courts choose to intervene to enforce it. The chapter will conclude by analyzing the implications of these cases for extraterritorial application of domestic and international human rights guarantees.

Primary PM2.5 emissions contributed significantly to poor air quality in China. We present an interdisciplinary study to measure the magnitudes of socioeconomic factors in driving primary PM2.5 emission changes in China between 1997–2010, by using a regional emission inventory as input into an environmentally extended input–output framework and applying structural decomposition analysis. Our results show that China's significant efficiency gains fully offset emissions growth triggered by economic growth and other drivers. Capital formation is the largest final demand category in contributing annual PM2.5 emissions, but the associated emission level is steadily declining. Exports is the only final demand category that drives emission growth between 1997–2010. The production of exports led to emissions of 638 thousand tonnes of PM2.5, half of the EU27 annual total, and six times that of Germany. Embodied emissions in Chinese exports are largely driven by consumption in OECD countries.

How can international law protect both international security and the human rights of displaced people? Existing international law protects only displaced refugees: those who flee persecution on the basis of religion, race, nationality, or political opinion. This article argues that a new Displaced Persons Convention must be created to protect the human rights of the world’s other 35 million victims of civil conflict and climate change who do not meet this narrow definition. International Refugee Law must be preserved as it is because it enshrines critical protections for minority rights that must not be diluted. However, an additional instrument of international law is necessary to resolve an issue that is at once one of the greatest human rights issues of our time and a threat to international peace and security. To support this argument, this article presents a comprehensive history of refugees in international law, combining primary sources and original interview data to trace how states have agreed for centuries that refugee law should protect minority rights, even as shifting state interests have changed refugee protection over time. This article refutes other scholarly proposals and UN practices that expand the category of “refugee.” It also contributes to growing scholarly interest in the history of human rights law by arguing that refugee law predates the modern human rights regime, challenges its foundations, and extends its claims to universality.

The Israeli State recently announced that it may begin to use genetic tests to determine whether potential immigrants are Jewish or not. This development would demand a rethinking of Israeli law on the issue of the definition of Jewishness. In this article, we discuss the historical and legal context of secular and religious definitions of Jewishness and rights to immigration in the State of Israel. We give a brief overview of different ways in which genes have been regarded as Jewish, and we discuss the relationship between this new use of genetics and the society with which it is co-produced. In conclusion, we raise several questions about future potential impacts of Jewish genetics on Israeli law and society.

The unexpected ocean fertilization experiment off the west coast of Canada in 2012 highlights the reality that non-governmental actors can already initiate small- to medium-scale environmental experiments and solar radiation management (SRM) field experiments with no government funding or approval. Without careful consideration and development of a governance framework for these types of experimentation, governments could be caught out having to respond ad hoc to situations driven by non-governmental actors.

This two-day workshop considered and evaluated governance mechanisms that may be useful for managing proposed SRM field experiments. Two specific procedural mechanisms were under consideration: environmental impact assessments and research registries. To ensure discussions were as realistic as possible, participants used a set of recently published SRM field experiment proposals as hypothetical examples when considering and evaluating both mechanisms. The workshop operated under the Chatham House Rule, and no attempts were made to forge consensus positions or to generate policy recommendations. Rather, this workshop was exploratory in nature, with discussions ranging widely along with personal opinions on some topics.

Solar geoengineering has been proposed as a possible response measure in the event of a "climate emergency." Scientific evidence for climate emergencies in the form of tipping points, however, is contested and unsettled. Furthermore, declarations of emergency entail authoritarian political tendencies that historically have given rise to repression and abuse. By definition, an emergency must exhibit a combination of high risk, urgency and necessity; no plausible climatic tipping point displays all these attributes simultaneously. A weak scientific basis together with genuine societal peril argues against the continued emergency framing of solar geoengineering.

Background: Missed hospital appointments are a major cause of inefficiency worldwide. Healthcare providers are increasingly using Short Message Service reminders to reduce ‘Did Not Attend’ (DNA) rates. Systematic reviews show that sending such reminders is effective, but there is no evidence on whether their impact is affected by their content. Accordingly, we undertook two randomised controlled trials that tested the impact of rephrasing appointment reminders on DNA rates in the United Kingdom. Trial Methods Participants were outpatients with a valid mobile telephone number and an outpatient appointment between November 2013 and January 2014 (Trial One, 10,111 participants) or March and May 2014 (Trial Two, 9,848 participants). Appointments were randomly allocated to one of four reminder messages, which were issued five days in advance. Message assignment was then compared against appointment outcomes (appointment attendance, DNA, cancellation by patient). Results: In Trial One, a message including the cost of a missed appointment to the health system produced a DNA rate of 8.4%, compared to 11.1% for the existing message (OR 0.74, 95% CI 0.61–0.89, P<0.01). Trial Two replicated this effect (DNA rate 8.2%), but also found that expressing the same concept in general terms was significantly less effective (DNA rate 9.9%, OR 1.22, 95% CI 1.00–1.48, P<0.05). Moving from the existing reminder to the more effective costs message would result in 5,800 fewer missed appointments per year in the National Health Service Trust in question, at no additional cost. The study’s main limitations are that it took place in a single location in England, and that it required accurate phone records, which were only obtained for 20% of eligible patients. We conclude that missed appointments can be reduced, for no additional cost, by introducing persuasive messages to appointment reminders. Future studies could examine the impact of varying reminder messages in other health systems. Trial Registration Controlled-Trials.com 49432571

How can international law better protect both international security and the human rights of people fleeing violence? International refugee law protects only the refugees: those fleeing across borders due to a well-founded persecution on the basis of race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group. The world’s other 42.3 million people displaced by violence have few protections under international law. This article proposes and sketches new international law to address this crucial human rights problem. I argue that a new Displaced Persons Convention to protect people fleeing violent conflict is needed to supplement the 1951 Refugee Convention. The Refugee Convention must be preserved because of the critical protections it provides for the rights of minorities and political dissidents. Adding a new Displaced Persons Convention would better protect the human rights of individuals fleeing violent conflict and state failure, further state interests, and improve international security.

Regular physical activity supports healthy human functioning1,​2,​3. Might climate change—by modifying the environmental determinants of human physical activity—alter exercise rates in the future4? Here we conduct an empirical investigation of the relationship between meteorological conditions, physical activity and future climate change. Using data on reported participation in recreational physical activity from over 1.9 million US survey respondents between 2002 and 2012, coupled with daily meteorological data, we show that both cold and acutely hot temperatures, as well as precipitation days, reduce physical activity. We combine our historical estimates with output from 21 climate models and project the possible physical activity effects of future climatic changes by 2050 and 2099. Our projection indicates that warming over the course of this century may increase net recreational physical activity in the United States. Activity may increase most during the winter in northern states and decline most during the summer in southern states.

As Vladimir Putin embarks on another six-year term as Russia’s president, Western pundits and policymakers are left wondering whether his reelection means that Moscow’s muscular policies toward America and other Western powers will continue or even escalate. But what is the reality of Russian power in the Putin era? Is Russia a rising, declining or stagnating power? How does its standing in the global order compare to other nations, including the United States, China and European powers? This report by Simon Saradzhyan, director of the Russia Matters Project at Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, and Nabi Abdullaev, a lecturer at the Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences, seeks to systematically answer these questions, which have been the subject of considerable debate in recent years. While some scholars have expressed the view that 21st-century Russia is in decline, others have dubbed it the No. 2 nation in the post-Cold War world.